Guthrie: the trouble with women

By John Keegan

12:00AM GMT 16 Feb 2001

'THERE is a feeling about being taken for granted." Gen Sir Charles Guthrie, on the penultimate day of his four years as Chief of the Defence Staff, was in reflective mood. "We have never let anyone down. Forty operations and never let anyone down."

Gen Guthrie is enormously proud of the forces he commands. He also observes due deference to the political administration which exercises constitutional authority over him and his servicemen and servicewomen. We spoke about the "40 operations" that the Services have carried out in his, and New Labour's, time. They include small-scale humanitarian relief operations, mounted to deal with natural disaster, and full-scale wars, as in Kosovo.

Intervention in Kosovo, he believes, did the Government enormous service because it demonstrated both New Labour's military will and its commitment to the principle of national self-determination. He takes pride in the Army's mission to Sierra Leone, where it has been able to demonstrate its skill in transmitting to recruits the professional standards by which he sets such store.

Gen Guthrie also believes that the rescue operation mounted by the SAS and Parachute Regiment to free military hostages captured by the West Side Boys exemplifies the Army's unique tactical expertise. "No one else could have done it so quickly and so well," he said. He was scathing about the claims of other nations' to meet the same standards, particularly in the context of the EU's Rapid Reaction Force, currently a bone of contention between Brussels and Washington.

"I'm absolutely realistic about it. The Europeans couldn't even begin to react rapidly at the moment. They can do very simple things. They can do some soft peace-keeping but I don't see them war fighting." He picked up a theme of his Liddell Hart lecture earlier in the week, when he spoke of leaving simpler military tasks to armies such as the Austrian and the Irish forces.

He said that he was not hostile to the idea of the Rapid Reaction Force, as long as its limitations were accepted. "I see it as a pool of troops which can do very simple things, not difficult things. When difficult things are around, we'll need the Americans." That would depend on "getting the relationship between Nato and the EU right" which would require "tough negotiations". "The French want to find a solution and we've made it clear that we don't want a symbolic force.

"We don't want more generals, we don't want more flags and we don't want more headquarters. The French would like to see the Rapid Reaction Force more autonomous than we would but that's an argument that we will win, I think. The Germans agree with us and so do other nations. I hope it will all be right." Foreign problems worry him less than domestic ones. At home, he has two main concerns: the cultural assault on the Armed Forces by the politically correct and the continuing financial famine.

Culturally, the Services' traditional ethos has been attacked on several fronts, by feminists, by the disabled lobby and by the gay liberation activists. He was unworried by the homosexual issue. "I was one of those people who never thought homosexuality would make a difference and the measures we have taken have proved me right." Gen Guthrie recalled that there had always been homosexuals in uniform and that the Services had perfectly effective means of accommodating them.

Feminism was more troublesome because, when allied to political correctness, it could take absurd form. "Some of it is absolutely ridiculous. I discovered the other day that somebody was advocating that an unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicle, a UAV, should be called an uninhabited aerial vehicle. Outside the ridiculous, however, there are still dangers. The Chiefs of Staff must make it quite clear that, if they introduce women into the SAS, there is a real danger of damaging something that works.

"If social engineering and equal opportunities are put in front of combat effectiveness the Services will be damaged." He recently got "very cross" with Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, a keen advocate of military feminism, over the issue. The duty of the Chiefs of Staff, he said, was "to keep the best forces for when times are really terrible. The job is not to structure forces for the good times. You can't have two structures: one for good times and one for bad."

Some advocates of change, he said, were, to be quite honest, "barking", particularly over recruiting the disabled. Fortunately, there was strong and widespread support for the Services, "never less than 70 per cent during Kosovo", more than in any other country. The position requires us, however, to be very, very careful year after year after year. The Chiefs of Staff must stand united."

On the Forces' equipment requirements, he was optimistic. He believed the Government was committed to purchasing two new large aircraft carriers and to the acquisition of the American joint strike fighter.